Microsoft Research announced WorldWide Telescope (WWT) project back in 2007. After several years, Microsoft open sourced the project in July 2015. Today, Microsoft announced that they are moving WWT from Microsoft Research to become part of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and a migration to Microsoft Azure.
The adoption of WWT by the AAS is a great example of a public-private partnership. WWT started as a research project at Microsoft Research (MSR), which distributed the WWT software for free. At MSR, Curtis Wong was the inventor of WWT, and Jonathan Fay was its principal software architect. The desktop (Windows) version of WWT is very popular, with millions of users including amateur astronomers, educators, and planetarium presenters. The advent of a fully Web-based version of WWT several years ago allowed the program to start gaining real traction with the professional community. The WWT Web-based tools (API) are highly customizable and have been used to create interfaces that highlight and serve specific survey data, as well as to make viewers that link literature and data, such as the ADS All-Sky Survey, which allows users to lea which parts of the sky have been studied when, and for what reason.
Microsoft Research, in cooperation with the .NET Foundation, open-sourced WWT in 2015, so that an even broader community of users could begin to contribute both code and guidance to the project. In parallel, the AAS appointed the WWT Task Force, chaired by AAS Vice-President Jack Bus, in early 2015 to review the possibility of taking on the WWT. The task force sought community input and then put a plan for participation to a Council vote at the 227th AAS meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, on Monday. After debate and discussion, the Council agreed to invest significantly in the effort and to implement the plan developed by the task force.
Check out the “What Can WorldWide Telescope Do for Me?” video which demonstrates to researchers, educators, and outreach professionals why they might want to use WWT now.